A few days ago Maureen Henry posted a blog looking for Photo Editing Help. The photo she was looking to fix was an underexposed "before" shot of a kitchen. Now that the kitchen is painted and staged, she wanted to be able to show both a "before" and "after" shot. She has a great "after" shot, she just needs a properly exposed "before" shot. Only problem: She can't go back and reshoot the "before" since the kitchen doesn't look that way anymore.
Wait a minute. Maybe we can take the "after" photo, and photoshop it back to an earlier point in time. We can at least unpaint it.
Here goes:
Open the image -- I'm doing this in Photoshop Elements 5
Click on the Selection Brush tool
Set Mode to Mask Mode
Here's an easy way to think about Masking: If you were painting a wall, and there was an object you did not want painted, say a baseboard, you'd probably cover the baseboard with masking tape to keep the paint off. Well, that's what we're doing here.
The hardest part is getting the edges straight. Start by dragging the cursor along the outline of the object you want to mask. I usually start with a small brush size, and tackle the edges. Just like if I were painting a wall.
Once you've got the edges right, you can change to a large brush and fill in the rest of the area. Just keep dragging the brush tool around the image until you've covered (masked) all the areas that you do NOT want to paint.
Now for the easy part. Click Enhance -> Adjust Color -> Replace color. You'll notice your mask disappears and you now have areas selected with marching ants.
The replace color dialogue box will appear. Make sure the left side eyedropper is the active one.
Now click on the red painted wall in the image (that's the part we are going to change back to its original neutral color) . The color showing in the dialogue box will change to the selected color. Move the hue, saturation, and lightness sliders until the new color looks about right to you. Move the Fuzziness slider towards the right to blend the final change into the total image.
When you are finished, hit Select -> Deselect. This isn't perfect, and would need some detail touch-up with the clone stamp ... but we're on the way to unpainting Maureen's kitchen.
Wow Cheryl - This is such a great idea. I have software from Benjamin Moore that does this also but it is not really user friendly. I have been meaning to blog about it but the software only works on my old PC and you know I'm a Mac Girl now. The BM software is cool because it gives you the option to "paint" the room with the actual Benjamin Moore paint colors. I usually don't do this for Home Staging clients because it takes some time and really they don't care that much about the paint colors because they are leaving anyway. I have used if for a few interior redesign clients. It is a great tool.
I think this proves that the kitchen really looks best red.
Could you post this in the Stage if Forward group also. I think they would be interested.
Thanks for the great tutorial on how to do this on Photoshop.
Here is the link for the Benjamin Moore website. It is called color preview. In case anyone does not have Photoshop and would like to play around.
Thanks, Cheryl! I've bookmarked this blog..greatly appreciated!
Julia
Hi Cheryl,
This is really cool, thanks for the info!
Oh, wow! thank you!
I'll definately have to use this some day. Time to bookmark! This rates a 5.
WOW... I use a Benjamine Moore program to do this But to do this in Photoshop... would make it all one stop tweaking.
Great Advice.
Me
I knew I wanted Photoshop - fun stuff I may never get any work done!
Oh right I'm supposed to use it for work - I forgot!
Here's the link to the Benjamin Moore color preview software site in case anyone does not have photoshop. COLOR PREVIEW.
First click on LETS PAINT. Then upload your own photos by clicking on PAINT YOUR OWN DIGITAL PHOTOS. This lets you upload photos off your computer. It is pretty easy. The technique is similar to what Cheryl outlined in the blog. If you don't want to use your own photos you can play around with their sample photos. It is pretty easy to use and it is free!
I have used it for several redesign clients and they get a really big kick out of it. I had a client who was debating between painting her bedroom red, green or gold. So I used this software to "Paint" it each color. It was a lot of fun. We eventually settled on a beautiful sage green, very soothing for a bedroom.